Opting In, Opting Out

Is that really what life's all about? (That's right!)

Hello girl it’s been awhile.¹

As readers of either or both of my newsletters know, I spent the summer on pause from putting stuff out there to think about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I spent some money getting help with this process. I spent a good deal of time that probably looked idle to the untrained eye, but I knew that what I was not doing was as important as anything I might do.

While I did not have a bolt-of-lightning kind of revelation, I had a lot of small but clarifying zaps that, cumulatively, were about as good as any one big a-ha.

The main theme that keeps emerging is the longing to simplify. That applies to my non-writing life (possessions, space, attention), but since this is my writing newsletter I’ll focus on that.

With the explosion of platforms that coincided exactly with my published career, I, like so many of my peers, dove into each new channel with a lot of enthusiasm and varying levels of success. I was praised for this by people involved with my career, from readers to publicists. Fellow authors sought me out for advice about how to make it work for them.

I leaned into this with all my might. For a time, it paid off professionally and personally, and (importantly) I liked it!

But then…well, let me hand the mic to Lore Wilbert for a moment:

We were sold a load of crock by tech giants who wanted us to give them all of our attention, and publishers (I think?) scrambled to keep up with this new way of showing up in the world and just lumped it all into “platform.” But I think I can say with some authority as someone who’s been at this writing online thing for over twenty years: nothing reaches or retains readers like writing itself.

And also:

Stop idolizing the 1% who make it big on social media platforms.

I know this can be easier said than done if you’re a working writer whose publisher gives you helpful advice like, “Think in terms of creating a viral moment.” Or:

The act of thoughtful writing that lasts (which is what book publishers want, in theory) is in direct conflict with the attention economy (which publishing as an industry has also completely bought into). This puts writers in an impossible position. I think you can juggle it all for a time and believe it’s working, but eventually you have to pick a side.

The best thing Apple News gave me this week was Zach Baron’s wonderful, in-depth interview with Martin Scorsese from GQ. He’s 80, and he has picked his side.

Getting older is a relentless process of paring down. Getting older is an exercise in letting go. Let go of anger: “I’m at the age now where you just—you’ll die.” Let go of fitting in, of going up to Rao’s with important people. Let go of other people’s opinions: “That doesn’t mean you don’t take advice and you don’t discuss and argue, but at a certain point you know what you want to do. And you have no choice.” Let go of the idea that you might someday visit the Acropolis. Let go of the idea that a movie needs a beginning, a middle, and an end: “Maybe the middle’s all around it, you know?” Let go of the Academy’s opinion, of the idea of being part of Hollywood at all: “I don’t really belong there anyway.”

I’m turning 53 next week and technically could still be in my “going to Rao’s with important people” phase, except no, I’m not. I feel I have done my version of that in my little pond, and it was fun and I’m grateful. But it’s irrelevant to the work I want to do now.

The work I want to do now is the same work I’ve always tried to do. To write about humans wrestling with everyday human things. The cycles of death-burial-resurrection in human lives. The reckoning with mistakes, with disappointment. How others have failed you and you’ve failed others.

The algorithms aren’t into that. The AI would like to steer things toward easier equations, like meet cute + first breakup + reconciliation = happily ever after. Or good guy with gun meets bad guy with gun and pew pew pew = hero.

Much of the time off I’ve taken this year has been about reaffirming my commitment to what I care about, and slowly removing what doesn’t move me toward that. While at the same time sustaining a life that involves food, clothing, and shelter. The anxiety over these very real material needs is a powerful force that I think makes some of us go, Wait, maybe I can be in alignment with the work I want to do and be part of the 1% making it big? If I just hustle enough, maybe I can get there?

It’s not our fault that we get stuck in this thinking. It’s cruelly expensive to exist on this planet, and we’re just trying to survive it all.

But I’d so much rather people buy my books or hire me to help them with theirs or book me to speak about these things than buy my newsletters or my podcast or like my posts or enable me to “monetize my content.” 😵‍💫

In the interest of simplification, I plan to combine my newsletters and wind down the podcast, for starters. (I’ve got a couple more eps coming, though, so keep that feed subscribed!) I also keep working on my writing space and habits to allow more room for better attention. And I will continue to move slowly when it comes to my current work in progress.

As far as that, I’ve been thinking about one of Flannery O’Connor’s letters in The Habit of Being. She wrote to a friend about “Everything That Rises Must Converge”:

I’d like to write a whole bunch of stories like that, but once you’ve said it you’ve said it, and that about expresses what I have to say on That Issue. But pray the Lord will send me some more. I’ve been writing for sixteen years and I have the sense of having exhausted my original potentiality and being now in need of the kind of grace that deepens perception, a new shot of life or something.

If grace is not forthcoming from elsewhere, I think we can give it to ourselves by doing the work of paring down, opting out of what isn’t serving that, and opting in to what will. We can greatly up our chances of a new shot of life and deepened perceptions by resisting the robots, clarifying what matters to us, and holding onto that tenaciously. Then, as Scorsese says,

You keep going until you can’t. But what I mean is that you gotta rip it out of your skull and your guts. To find out what the hell you really…what do you really feel should be said at this point in life by you? You gotta say something with a movie. Otherwise, what’s the point of making it? You’ve got to be saying something.”

• The title of this post popped to mind when I was reading Lore’s post, and I was thinking “C’est La Vie” had been an early 90s song, but it’s in fact from 1986, egads.

• I mentioned that I’ll be combining newsletters. It will all go into The Inbox Variations by the end of 2023. If you’re not already subscribed there, would you consider doing that now?

1. “Girl” in the universal, gender-neutral sense. Gen-x may recognize this line from “I Go Crazy” by Paul Davis, 1977.